Battle of Waterloo (1815): Ligny and Quatre Bras
[69] [waterloo-1-69] About 40,000-50,000 men were killed or wounded in a day of artillery, cavalry, and infantry -- a Napoleonic bu On a timeline, write the date and place of Battle of Waterloo before any adjective of victory. Year 1815, line “Ligny and Quatre Bras,” figure 06. Do not read the dead as points. Elba, the 7th Coalition, and Napoleon's strike into Belgium to smash Wellington and Bluch
About 40,000-50,000 men were killed or wounded in a day of artillery, cavalry, and infantry -- a Napoleonic butcher's bill, not a twentieth-century one. Hougoumont, La Haye Sainte, and the misjudged midday start (mud, or waiting for the ground to dry) structure every English account.
The battle closed the Napoleonic Wars in the English schoolroom more than Leipzig had. Belgian tourism, British "nearest-run thing" prose, and Prussian insistence on being in the picture are the memory war that never ended. For this atlas it is the low-scale, high-memory end of an era -- and a rhyme with later "one-day" myths (Midway, Tsushima) that should not be equated.
A ridge, a delay, and an ally who arrived Waterloo is a British national day that was an allied day -- and a French catastrophe that Vienna then locked in. Grouchy's chase of Blucher is the French what-if that never dies. Hougoumont soaked men. D'Erlon's attack failed. Ney's cavalry charged squares without enough horse artillery. The Imperial Guard's late attack broke.
The timeline keeps year, place, and what moved. If “Ligny and Quatre Bras” is the movement, the figure is 06 and the year is 1815.1815
Figures to keep
- Year of the action
- 1815
- Figure in the record
- 06
- Action
- Battle of Waterloo
- Line of the front
- Ligny and Quatre Bras